Hey folks,

Freedcats here. I have news about new content. Some is good and some not so good.

Before before that... Jade Pheonix 1 has been a really big success! THANK YOU SO MUCH! It is at 5 stars and approaching 1400 reviews. YOU ROCK!!!

Ok, that out of the way, here's the good news/bad news.

Bad news first so we can get it out of the way: I won't be going back and updating the previous content. Sorry. I understand that is frustrating, so let me try to explain:

I am a full-time author. I write for a living. Selling books puts food on my family's table, pays for my mortgage, puts gas in my car. In short, selling books is how I pay my bills.

Creating quality content is hard. It's always time-consuming, sometimes frustrating, and often-times unprofitable. The reason is that it can take months to put a book out. Months of writing, editing, re-editing, proofing, and publishing. Things like covers, blurbs, advertising, and all that jazz cost time and money. So I ask that you realize that I take about 6 months to publish a book. That's 3-6 months where the only income is my previous books yet there are expenditures nonetheless.

Moreover, Jade Pheonix is not self-published, unlike my other series, Invasion. Portal Books is an amazing publishing house and also deserves both a say and the right to not be negatively impacted. They need to feed their families too.

I tell you all this so you understand that I'm not trying to be a dick when I only put up 1st draft material on Royal Road for free. Please remember, this is free. I post free material because it is super important to me that people should have the option to read without paying. Reading is a fundamental right in my view. I support local libraries and reading groups because of this belief.

That said, I need to make a living. Thus I post up the 1st draft in hopes it entertains, offers people a chance to read for free, and in exchange I tend to get some pretty great feedback. My readers are awesome about their feedback, so kudos to you folks and thank you.

However, some of future content, which I will be posting for free, may have alignment issues. Some things, including characters won't make full sense. Sorry about that, but it's unavoidable. I also won't be posting any Interludes. Those are only for the final Amazon version also.

I have and will give you a sneak peek though. First, notice I posted the new prologue for book 2. Also, at the bottom of this post, I'll throw in some "What can you expect in the final version" materials.

The Good News: New content is coming! Over the next weeks I'm hoping to post at least 1 or 2 chapters per week.

Writing tends to come and go in effectiveness and efficiency. I'm still pretty new at this career and, as much as I wish I could, I can't put out content like the big name authors out there who seem to write a book a month. There is just no way I'm that good. I'll keep trying though.

Other Book 2 news: I figure that JP 2 will up on Amazon in its final version in probably 3-4 months. That's a guestimate, cause editing and publishing dates can cause delays.

Changes in Book 2 final version:

1. Obviously Interludes. Those were really popular in book 1 so I'll be keeping that up and adding them to the final published version.

2. As is common in 1st drafts, there are alignment issues that happen between early and late in books. Those are the kinds of things that get caught and fixed in the deep content edits.

3. POV Skipping. There are effective ways to swap out POV and not so effective ways. I went a little overboard in the 1st draft so you'll see more MC and less skipping around. Not none, just less. (e.g. Fight scenes in chapters 12 - Onslaught and 13 - Close)

4. Better overall plot management and time management. One of the HUGE gaps in book 2 is how hard it is to keep track of time. By the time you reach where the posting has ended it is has only been 3 weeks, but it feels like more. That isn't wrong, per se, but it IS poorly managed and represented. I'll be putting in a bit of effort to make it feel more tangible.

5. Normal edits that involve adding/removing characters, improving consistency, and a bit of clean-up on relationships.

6. Another LOOOOOng book. It is going to be even longer than book 1, which was 770 pages and nearly 24 hours of audio content. Right now we're looking at least 250K words. I must be insane...

So there you have it. Again, I am aware that the bad news portion won't be super popular, sorry. Hard decisions aren't always popular. But we all do what we have to.

As always, I THANK YOU for taking the time to read the stuff I write. I'm flattered and honored that you take the time out of your day to read my material. My goal is always to write something entertaining and just hope that is accomplished. Please feel free to comment and share your feedback. I Just ask you be polite and understanding to each other.

Have a great one. I look forward to seeing your comments on the new material starting Monday morning!

- Freedcats